Previous Thematic Projects

Previous Thematic Projects

Thematic Projects 2012-13

Thematic Project Trimester 1Title: How Long Does it Take to Get from Zero to One
Tutor: Richard Wright

INTRODUCTION

The overall subject of this seminar series is time and media. By which I mean media which is experienced in time rather than being about time. We will begin by exploring moving image and animation as the first dominant forms of time-based media and their differences to recent forms of digital or ‘new’ media. Why is new media so concerned with the immediate and the simultaneous rather than with duration? Can we see how new media ‘moves’? Can it produce its own ‘image of time’? How long does it take to get from 0 to 1?

STRUCTURE
The seminars consist of presentations, discussions, demonstrations, screenings, class activities and exercises (some literally) and project assignments to be completed in between sessions.

PROJECT ASSIGNMENTS
Project assignments are expected to be taken as far as a prototype, pilot or rough. Where this is not practical with the time or resources available in this short seminar (if you needed to time lapse record a plant growing, for example), a realistic production plan would suffice.

For the second thematic project this year we will compile an Encyclopedia of Media Objects, bringing together objects nominated by core and visiting tutors and first and second year students. For the thematic project for the second trimester we will be asking core tutors and core visitors give a short lecture on a ‘media object’ of their choice. It might be a physical, digital object, a technique, transaction or cultural trope – but a ‘media object’ they particularly value and have a particular fondness for. This is the beginning of an ongoing project to compile an encyclopedia of media objects published online as a departmental publication.

Thematic Project Trimester 3Title: Creative Industries

In the 21st century, the notion of creative industries has begun to globally replace established notions of arts and culture. Yet the term has a strong 20th century legacy of the classical film, music and mass media industry. This history is by no means simply a corporate history. Artists themselves have created various industries of their own, from Oulipo’s literary writing with formal constraints via the Warhol factory to Michel Gondry’s Home Movie Factory. In other cases, such as Jamaican dub production, Malcolm McLaren’s punk and Jess Franco’s B movies, the culture industry product also became experimental. In this Thematic Seminar, we will reconstruct the discourse on creative industries from Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer up to the Dutch TopTeam Creatieve Industrie, investigate the machineries of various creative industries and experiment with our own formulas.